Philip Martin’s remembrance of Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday, published by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, describes her as a friend he never met. That framing gives the piece its emotional center. It also prompts a practical question for anyone who values film criticism: when a writer’s work matters to us, how carefully do we return to it?
One answer is to read beyond the verdict. A review contains more than a recommendation to buy a ticket or stay home. Its selection of details, treatment of characters, and movement from observation to judgment can reward another look after the immediate release conversation has passed.
This is a critical commentary prompted by Martin’s remembrance, rather than a review of a particular film or an account of Hornaday’s private life. The approach proposed here is a way of engaging with a critic’s work; it should not be mistaken for a summary of Martin’s argument or a claim about any specific Hornaday review.
Let the writing remain more specific than the tribute
Remembrance naturally encourages broad descriptions: perceptive, generous, incisive, influential. Those words express appreciation, but they cannot show a reader what happens inside a paragraph. For that, we need the paragraph itself: the detail the critic chooses, the distinction she makes, the assumption she asks an audience to reconsider.
Our earlier essay on the connection readers find in Ann Hornaday’s film criticism considered the attachment a recognizable voice can inspire. A different task follows from that attachment: making time for close reading rather than allowing affection to substitute for attention.
My view is that a useful tribute should leave room for the work to surprise us. That includes encountering a judgment we resist, an emphasis we had forgotten, or a description that seems sharper after another viewing. Respect does not require turning every sentence into a settled truth.
Start with a movie you remember clearly
To revisit a critic’s writing, begin with a review of a film you know well. Familiarity gives you something against which to test the prose. You can ask whether a particular performance detail was central to your experience, whether the review captures the film’s rhythm, and whether its description of the ending matches the feeling the ending produced.
Before rereading, write down three brief observations of your own: a character’s consequential decision, an image that stayed with you, and a moment when your response changed. These notes need not be polished. Their purpose is to preserve your initial perspective before another writer’s vocabulary begins organizing it.
Then read the review all the way through. Resist scanning for agreement. The interesting discovery may be that you and the critic reached similar conclusions through different evidence—or that a disagreement begins with something more precise than taste.
Separate what happens from what it means
A useful second pass distinguishes three kinds of statements. Description identifies what appears on screen. Interpretation proposes what that detail means. Evaluation judges how successfully the film uses it. These activities often share a sentence, but they make different demands on the reader.
Consider a hypothetical example: a character pauses before entering a room. The pause is an observable action. Calling it hesitation interprets the performance. Calling it a beautifully restrained expression of fear evaluates its effect. Each step may be persuasive, but the steps are not interchangeable.
This distinction makes disagreement more productive. You might accept the observation while questioning the interpretation: perhaps the pause suggests calculation rather than fear. Or you might agree about the emotion while finding the filmmaking too insistent. A precise objection gives you something to revisit in the scene.
Ask whose experience organizes the review
Character analysis offers a particularly revealing test. Does the review explain the film primarily through the protagonist’s desires? Does it notice the people affected by those desires? Does it distinguish what a character believes from what the film allows the audience to understand?
A convincing performance can bring us close to someone whose choices deserve scrutiny. Conversely, a character who remains emotionally distant may still be essential to the film’s moral structure. Reading closely means asking whether the critic’s attention follows the screenplay’s spotlight or examines what lies outside it.
The distinction matters in a character-centered piece such as our spoiler-marked analysis of competing loyalties in Ashes and Diamonds. When assessing any such interpretation, readers can ask whether the conclusions grow from the characters’ actions and circumstances. Sympathy is a response worth exploring; it is not, by itself, sufficient evidence.
Read quoted dialogue in its dramatic setting
A memorable movie line can give a review energy, but quotation should do more than supply an attractive sentence. Who speaks? Who hears it? Is the speaker honest, mistaken, performing confidence, or trying to wound someone? What happens immediately afterward?
Those questions prevent dialogue from becoming detached wisdom. A film may undermine a statement that sounds persuasive in isolation. An actor’s delivery may complicate its literal meaning. Silence from the listener may matter as much as the words.
When rereading criticism, notice whether a quotation opens an analysis or replaces one. The strongest use brings you back to the scene with greater sensitivity to its tensions. The same standard applies to a memorable sentence by a critic: understand the argument around it before treating it as a complete statement of her outlook.
Give older judgments their original circumstances
An older review records an encounter at a particular moment. Your return to it occurs under different circumstances: you may know the ending, have watched the film several times, or approach its relationships differently than you once did. Those changes affect what seems obvious.
That does not make an early judgment immune to criticism. It asks us to identify what has changed. Did another viewing reveal something the review overlooked? Did familiarity make a difficult structure easier to follow? Has your own experience altered which character commands your attention?
Allowing those questions into the reading keeps hindsight from becoming a contest. The aim is to understand how an interpretation was built and where it continues to hold.
Turn remembrance into a habit of attention
Martin’s framing of Hornaday as a friend he never met places a personal connection at the center of his remembrance. Readers need not claim that same relationship to respond meaningfully. They can choose a review, watch the film, and return to the argument with specific questions.
That practice preserves something valuable about criticism: its ability to make our responses more articulate without requiring them to become identical. A worthwhile return to Hornaday’s writing would leave space for both appreciation and examination. The next step is modest but substantial—read a paragraph slowly, look again at the scene it describes, and decide what you can now see more clearly.
Original content by this site's editorial team. Published: October 27, 2026 at 06:58:15 PDT (Los Angeles time)
